Warp
by CheerfulChemist
Summary: This is a one shot, strictly for fun, entry into the Castle Halloween Bash 2018. It can take place any time while Rick and Kate are living together at the loft. A dimensional warp?


Castle holds one slightly warm tube sock aloft. "The dryer's opened up a dimensional warp again."

Kate glances up from slicing mushrooms for a pasta sauce. "Castle, what are you talking about? What dimensional warp?"

"The one that eats socks. Most dryers do it. You put in two socks but only get one back. It's an almost universal phenomenon."

Kate lays her knife on the cutting board. "The thing that's a universal phenomenon is static electricity. It builds up when the clothes rub against each other. Your other sock is stuck to a shirt or something. It will turn up."

"Kate, don't you know the story of Curley Robinson, the boy who climbed into a dryer looking for his lost sock and was never seen again? He fell into another dimension. He may still be there with piles of socks from all over the world."

"Castle, I remember that case. Curley's mother was a drunk who left him by himself in a laundromat so she could go to the liquor store for booze. He was probably kidnapped by some sicko."

"Except that the police found absolutely no evidence of a kidnapping and no one saw anyone go near Curly or try to take him anywhere. You of all people know what cops do. They pick a theory of the case that's easy to swallow, rather than follow a lead that might get them laughed out of the department."

Kate blows air through her lips in exasperation. "If cops followed that lead, they would have deserved to be laughed out of the department. If you want me to believe that a dryer opens a gateway to another dimension, you're going to have to show me."

Castle squares his shoulders. "All right, I will." He hands her the lone sock and a Sharpie marker. "Here, write your name on that, and we'll give it a spin."

Kate rolls her eyes, signs the sock, and hands it back to Castle. "You run that through the dryer again, and all you're going to get is a warmer sock."

Castle throws the lonely foot covering into the waiting appliance, slams the door and programs a cycle. Ten minutes in, he pushes pause and opens the door again. The sock is gone.

"Very funny Castle. My grandfather was a magician, remember? That's an easy trick. You palmed the sock I signed. It was never in the dryer."

Squatting on his haunches, Castle reaches into the machine. "Kate, the warp is still there. I can touch it, and I think I can…"

Castle is sucked into the dryer. Kate takes a step forward, shouts for him, and is pulled in with him.

Castle's seen the sky a lot of colors, before and after storms, but never green. As he stares upward from the ground, he can see that it's green now. Kate is lying next to him, calling his name. She reaches for his hand as he reaches for hers. Their fingers entwine, and they support each other as they push themselves up to stand. She looks around. "Castle where are we?"

Castle regards their surroundings. "I don't see a yellow brick road or Munchkins, so clearly Oz is out." He points to the mountains of textiles surrounding them. "It's not the other end of the rainbow, it's the other end of the dryer warp." He points to a sock with her signature on it. "Another planet maybe, or even another universe."

"How do we get home?"

"I don't know if we can, Kate. I've never even had a sock come back. It could be a one-way trip. I'm sorry I got you into this."

"I'm sorry too, Babe, if I hadn't made fun of you, we wouldn't be here."

Castle pulls her close for a kiss. "We might as well start walking. Maybe there's a gateway or some sign of sentient life. Something."

"We need to look for food and water too. Especially water. Without it we won't survive more than three days, to go anywhere."

Castle shades his eyes and points. "I think I see something glinting out there. Maybe it's a sign of civilization."

Kate sighs and starts walking in the direction Castle indicated. "Might as well. There's nowhere else to go."

As the mysterious light is joined by the sound of rushing water, Kate and Castle increase their pace. The sight that greets them is both glorious and welcome. Kate sniffs. "That's the same scent we smelled at the sock stacks. What is it?"

"Kate, it's a mélange of fragrances from dryer sheets. It stuck to the socks, and the heat drove it from the water. The good news is it means the water is probably safe to drink. Distillation's a pretty decent purification method. Now if we can just track some food."

"Castle, who throws food in a dryer?"

"Spoken like a woman who's never had to chase after a toddler - and who remembers to check her pockets before throwing things in the wash. The warp has probably captured all kinds of edibles. The question is what happened to them."

"I can tell you that," a voice comes from behind them. Their visitor is clearly not human. The bluish tinge to her skin suggests an oxygen-carrying fluid based on copper and her voice squeaks, but they have no trouble understanding her. "This project was never meant to capture lifeforms, particularly not sentient ones. Our portals are for artifacts, like socks, paperclips, the tops of pens - small things that are ubiquitous to a culture."

Castle stares at her, his eyebrows reaching for his hairline. "And how, may I ask, do you speak our language?"

"I speak many," the blue-skinned alien replies. "It is my gift. We have gathered some papers from your world, which I assume were accidentally introduced into your washing process. Most of them were what you would refer to as lists, receipts or memos. Over time we've managed to decode a number of words and grasp the syntax. This planet is just one of the many depositories for what we've collected, one of the smaller ones. When the transport mechanism put out an alert that you'd been swept up by the vortex, I was summoned. This sort of thing has happened before, but usually with immature members of your species, and others, who were exploring out of curiosity."

"Kids do crawl into dryers," Castle acknowledges.

"Just so," Blue Lady agrees. "And we have no wish to see anyone from any species come to harm."

Kate steps toward their greeter. "So you have a way to send us back?"

"I do, or rather our engineers do. But our warps are one way. Opening a new one, in the opposite direction, takes both considerable calculation and power. We'll draw the power from this planet's sun, but it will take several days to do so. As you have surmised, we do have the elements necessary to sustain you until your return to your home world. There is also shelter here. I will attempt to make you as comfortable as possible while you wait. Perhaps in the intervening time, you can tell me something of your culture, that we have not been able to glean from the objects we have accumulated."

Castle exchanges glances with Kate, who nods. He smiles at Ms. Blue. "We would be happy to try.

* * *

Blue holds up a small circlet of gathered fabric. "That's a scrunchy," Castle says. "Girls and some women wear them to tie back their hair, or that's the official story. Actually, these days women in strip clubs wear them on their ankles to keep from violating laws against complete nudity." Kate turns to him, her eyes shooting arrows. He flinches. "I just discovered that in my research for a book."

"How would a scrunchy find its way into a machine meant for drawing the moisture from your garments?" Blue inquires.

"I'll answer that," Kate insists. "Sometimes when you use one to put your hair up before bed, they come off while you sleep and get tangled up in the sheets. Then they turn up in the dryer when you do the wash."

Blue's face takes on a look that Castle assumes means pleasure. "You just touched on one thing that has greatly puzzled us about your species. What exactly is sleep?"

"We close our eyes, and our brains go into a mode that allows us to be unconscious of what is going on around us for some minutes or hours," Castle explains.

Blue seems puzzled. "Why? It would seem like a terrible waste of time."

"Not at all," Castle argues. "Sleep permits our bodies to rest and repair themselves. We also consolidate things we've learned while we were awake. But the best part about sleeping is dreaming - allowing our imaginations to fly free. We explore thoughts, ideas, and places we could never conceive of when we are awake."

"Like here?" Blue asks.

"Are you trying to tell me I'm dreaming?" Castle demands.

"What do you think?" Blue responds. "Do you really believe there's a planet with piles of lost socks and air that smells like fabric softener? You were just trying to figure out how to tell Kate that half of the pair of the socks she only wears when she has to put on her official N.Y.P.D. uniform is missing, weren't you? Why do you think your mind made me blue?"

An alert screams from Castle's computer. "Wake up! You're supposed to be writing!"

Castle jerks upward in his chair and tries to rub his eyes, but he has something in his hand - Kate's missing official N.Y.P.D. uniform sock.


End file.
